The mayor of southern Ukraine’s Melitopol changed into abducted on Friday via way of means of Russian squaddies occupying the city, President Volodymyr Zelensky and Ukrainian officers stated.
“A organization of 10 occupiers abducted the mayor of Melitopol Ivan Fedorov,” Ukraine’s parliament stated on Twitter.
“He refused to cooperate with the enemy,” it added.
It stated the mayor changed into seized while he changed into on the city’s disaster centre handling deliver issues.
In a video message overdue Friday, Zelensky showed the abduction, calling Fedorov “a mayor who bravely defends Ukraine and the contributors of his community”.
“This is glaringly a signal of weak spot of the invaders… They have moved to a brand new level of terror wherein they’re seeking to bodily do away with representatives of valid nearby Ukrainian authorities,” he stated.
“The seize of the mayor of Melitopol is consequently a criminal offense, now no longer handiest in opposition to a selected person, in opposition to a selected community, and now no longer handiest in opposition to Ukraine. It is a criminal offense in opposition to democracy itself… The acts of the Russian invaders might be appeared like the ones of Islamic State terrorists,” he stated.
The deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential administration, Kirillo Timoshenko, formerly published a video on Telegram displaying squaddies popping out of a constructing protecting a person wearing black, his head reputedly blanketed with a black bag.
According to the Ukrainian parliament, some other nearby official, the deputy head of the nearby council of Zaporizhzhia — one hundred twenty kilometres (seventy five miles) north of Melitopol — changed into kidnapped after which launched some days ago.
Before the Russian invasion, Melitopol had simply over 150,000 inhabitants.
